


Freedom to Roam

by doctor_funkinstein



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:20:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27337819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doctor_funkinstein/pseuds/doctor_funkinstein
Summary: Arthur the Horse finds freedom from his tyranical master in the expanses of space left to him.
Kudos: 3





	Freedom to Roam

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sock](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sock/gifts).



The beatings were not few and far between, but that's why I was so glad to be free of them. Horses are not treated with the respect they deserve in the stables of the royal court; instead, we are belittled, mocked, unknown and unappreciated. Of all the places to be.  
That is why I fled. When my master turned his back, the urge to send him flying was almost overwhelming, and yet I did not; I stayed steady, I held my nerve, and I ran. To feel the thunder of my hooves without the force of a cane in my back. And there was the man I passed; the man who knew the tongue in which I spoke and thought not of me as I passed.  
He saved me from my master.  
The dank and frigid dungeon in which I found myself was not what I expected upon passing out of the garden, and yet was so fit for the man so different to anyone I had ever met. He led me by the bridle to a place where the ground clanged beneath my hooves and the sky was both endless and forever distant but frightfully close - so close I had to crane my neck to fit.  
Then that marvellous man disappeared. For whatever reasons, after he began to stink of sorrow, he disappeared; he rode in a carriage not pulled by a horse, but upright, and so much more malleable. The stench of the thing was almost overwhelming. It smelt of the metal like that on my hooves and the ethereal, unchanging light scent that followed the man inside.  
When he left, the windows closed. I could not reach the garden, the areas I grew, the hay I once was fed. Instead, I found myself living under the too-close sky and drifting through the too-open dark that never seemed to end. The floor was still too solid and unmoving beneath my hooves, and there was nothing to eat apart from scraps. They tasted similar to that which I would occasionally be fed by masters when I acted out against them with a bite. They smelled more like humans than other meats. I couldn't bring myself to agony. Such cruel creatures deserve to be kibble.  
The freedom was endless. I lived a life free of cruelty on this ship - I would eke my days on what I could find, but, eventually, I slipped into the darkness that had lingered on the edge of a beating. It was not as awful as you would imagine; much like falling asleep, it was a slip into peacefulness in a surrounding that had become my home at an age I could have only dreamed of had I been under that such cruel master.  
I owe nobody my life, yet I owe that strange man my death.


End file.
